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'The best books, reviewed with insight and charm, but without compromise.' - author Jackie French

Wednesday, 31 May 2017

Review: What is Poetry? The Essential Guide to Reading & Writing Poems

The brilliant Michael Rosen’s latest offering, What is Poetry?, introduces the many
faces of this underrated genre. He shares his knowledge onhow to appreciate, read, understand, and write poetry properly.

Through the deconstruction of poems, Rosen reveals what poetry is, what it
does, and how it expresses views and feelings. He shows by example how poetry plays
with words in a symbolic way, and tells stories in an abbreviated manner.

How and why is personification used in poetry? What
role do the borrowed voices of monologue play? Why does the clever device of irony
allow the reader to interpret the poem in their own way?

Rosen uses poems of
various kinds, and by many poets, including Robert Louis Stevenson, Banjo
Patterson, Edward Lear, and Elizabeth Barrett Browning as examples and answers to
these questions.

Nonsense verse is seen as poems ‘making new sense’.
Rosen touches on the reality of words, and the ‘secret strings’ that tie words
and meaning together as in assonance and alliteration, repetition and imagery.

We are reminded that words are tools of
communication. Their inversion, repetition, or alternative use, force us to
view them differently. By placing words in unfamiliar sequences we realize
their flexibility. Old words become new again to change the course of a poem or
story.

I love this
book! It’s an invaluable handbook/guide, not only for teachers and students,
but for any person working in the field of creative arts. Poems inspire, and
can be used as thinking tools to spark the imagination. It’s filled with
stimulating thoughts for writer’s block, and helpful, go-to ideas.

Title:
What is Poetry? The Essential guide to Reading and Writing Poems